A few months ago I had the fleeting thought to write a post about Stephen Biesty, the DK books cross-section legend. After learning he’d passed only just last year, I was disheartened to discover his personal website and galleries had gone offline, and there were no significant retrospectives of his career that I could find.
Now, after having looked through nearly every single work he produced and having read literally everything I could find online about him, I have come to find his quiet denouement rather touching. He certainly seemed to be private by design, offering only a handful of interviews in his lifetime. The longest profile I could find is weirdly condemning of his workmanlike ethos:
The artist himself is not quite as immediately engaging. Biesty is 35, with the smooth face and straight jeans of a Microsoft programmer. He lives in a Somerset cottage of grey-gold stone between a village church and a pair of wandering geese.
Biesty’s garden glows in the late-summer sun, yet he leads the way straight up to his studio and questions about his business. The room is almost bare of artist’s clutter, more an office with fax and easel and three paintbrushes laid parallel on a tissue to dry. ‘I don’t collect stuff,’ says Biesty.
He talks about his illustrating with a stern set to his chin, as if filling out a tricky detail. He doesn’t sketch – “There isn’t time to be doing reams of doodles” – but expands his work straight from thumbnail ideas to full-scale final pieces. These he completes, eyes close to the paper and hand in rhythm, layer by repetitive layer, between 7.30am and 5.30pm every weekday. “At lunchtime I go downstairs for half an hour and a sandwich.”
Biesty makes all this sound like mass production. “You’re employed to do one thing,” he says, straight as a factory manager. “Something that’s going to sell.” There are no posters of his pictures on his studio walls.
[…] Often, he answers with “we” rather than “I”.
I have to confess a great soft spot for all this. My great grandfather was studying technical illustration at Pratt before he was drafted into the war and lost at sea. His daughter became a graphic designer, as did her daughter — my mom. I appreciate that we all sat somewhere between art and science, heart and mind. Biesty’s seeming indifference towards an artistic identity gives his work more credibility for my tastes.
Biesty’s breakout moment came when the K of DK books asked Biesty to draw a steamboat in cross section. “I tried it lengthways and he said, ‘Fine. But try it the other way, like a loaf.’” And lo:
This became the centerpiece for his first book, Incredible Cross-Sections [here], and the seed for the rest of his career. Anyone around my age and above a certain threshold of autistic will have burned much library time on this amazing ‘90s run of DK books…
[Cole goes on to show and discuss other examples of Biesty’s work and to examine his influences…]
… Later in life, Biesty was able to admit some of the depth so evident in the work, as he accepted an award in 2011 for Into the Unknown [here]:
In a world where most information is stored and conveyed electronically, conventional non-fiction books for young people have taken a heavy hit. So is Into The Unknown a dinosaur, a final example of a Dying Breed? I believe not. In the years ahead, certainly fewer paper books will be produced. But those that are designed, written, and manufactured will be a bit like medieval manuscripts — special creations, works of art, unique, beautiful products to be collected and cherished. Into the Unknown, therefore, is not the end of a line but the beginning of a new, fresh and very beautiful one, and you have so kindly recognized that fact. Thank you all very much indeed…
* Robert J. Bezucha, The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848
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As we show (in addition to telling), we might spare a thought for an illustrator of a different ilk, William Steig; he died on this date in 2003. A cartoonist (most notably, in The New Yorker), and illustrator and writer of children’s books, he’s best known for Shrek!, which inspired the film series of the same name, as well as others that included Sylvester and the Magic Pebble (which won the Caldecott Medal), Abel’s Island, and Doctor De Soto. He was the U.S. nominee for the biennial and international Hans Christian Andersen Awards, as both a children’s book illustrator in 1982 and a writer in 1988.
When asked his opinion about the movie based on his picture book, Shrek!, William Steig responded: “It’s vulgar, it’s disgusting — and I loved it.” (With the release of Shrek 2 in 2004, Steig became the first sole-creator of an animated movie franchise that went on to generate over $1 billion from theatrical and ancillary markets after only one sequel.)
Your correspondent is headed off on the road, so (R)D will be in temporary hiatus. Regular service should resume on/around October 13. To keep you occupied until then, this tasty tidbit from Neal.fun (Neal Agarwal): “I’m not a robot.”
Long-time readers will know of your correspondent’s love for animator extraorinaire Chuck Jones (e.g., here). “Ellsworth Toohey” in Boing Boing reminds us that the master’s range was broad…
Rejected, the line enrolls in self-improvement boot camp, bending, flexing and inventing dazzling angles until he can sketch cathedrals with a single stroke. When the squiggle tries to match the precision, his chaotic scribbles collapse, and the dot chooses discipline over disorder.
Narrated with champagne-dry wit by Robert Morley, the film unfolds on spare backgrounds that feel lifted from a Mondrian canvas, while the squiggle’s jittery form was drawn on rice paper so the ink could literally misbehave. Norton Juster, author of the 1963 book, adapted his own text, seasoning math jokes with romantic wisdom: “To the vector belong the spoils.”
The short captured the 1965 Oscar for Best Animated Short, one of MGM’s final cartoons and proof that Jones could do more than torment coyotes. Decades later, its crisp pop-art minimalism still inspires…
As we learn from the best, we might recall that it was on this date in 1967 that Chuck Jones gave AFI Report an edited and slightly abridged copy of the speech he had just given at the the World Animation Retrospective, held in Montreal in 1967. (That year was Canada’s 100th birthday and the country celebrated by hosting Expo ’67 in Montreal. The animation retrospective, curated by Louise Beaudet for the Cinémathèque Québecoise was part of the celebration.) The quarterly publication of the American Film Institute subsequently published it, under the title “Animation is a Gift Word,” in a 1974 issue devoted to animation.
Animation festivals were a relatively new idea at the time. Annecy had started in 1960, but festivals in Zagreb and Hiroshima were still in the future. The Montreal event may have been the first international animation gathering on North American soil. Close to 200 animation professionals attended from North America, Europe and Asia.
The list of attendees can only be described as impressive. The U.S. was represented by people from both coasts: Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, Ward Kimball, Ub Iwerks, Abe Levitow, Pete Burness, June Foray, Paul Frees, Bill Hurtz, Steven Busustow, Les Goldman, Dave Hilberman, Jimmy Murakami, Milt Gray, Michael Lah, Fred Wolf, Walter Lantz, Bill Littlejohn, Art Babbitt, Bill Tytla, J.R. Bray, Otto Messmer, Pepe Ruiz, Edith Vernick, Shamus Culhane, John Culhane, I. Klein, Ruth Gench, Arnold Gillespie, Grim Natwick, Tissa David, Barrie Nelson, Dave Fleischer, Paul Terry, Mordi Gerstein, Ed Smith, Robert Breer, Richard Rauh, Phil Klein, Al Stahl, and Ruth Kneitel.
Canadian attendees included Norman McLaren, Grant Munro, Gerry Potterton, Mike Miller, and Ron Tunis.
Europeans included Len Lye, Peter Foldes, Fedor Khitruk, Jean Image, Bretislaw Pojar, John Halas, Bruno Bozzetto, Dusan Vukotic, Zelimir Matko, Ivan Ivanov-Vano, and S. Mancian.
A historian present on the site could have written a history of animation just by talking to the attendees…
Antropologist Kristin Bell explores laughter as a far more complex phenomenon than simple delight, reflecting on its surprising power to disturb and disrupt…
… As an anthropologist specializing in health and medicine, laughter isn’t really in my professional wheelhouse—unless you subscribe to the view that laughter is the best medicine. My interest in the topic is more personal, not just because of my history as a former Giggling Gertie, but because it’s a behavior that is much less straightforward than it seems.
Ideally, laughter is something we share. According to anthropologist Munro Edmonson, laughter is sociable; it ideally invites a similar response. Indeed, it has contagious qualities: When we hear someone laugh, we often laugh, or at least smile, ourselves—an effect consistently shown through psychological research. This is how we ended up with canned laughter on sitcoms. Studios realized that the sound of laughter made their shows seem funnier to their audiences, while also giving them a degree of control over when people laughed…
… According to the anthropologist Munro Edmonson, the central feature of laughter is aspiration: We release a forceful puff of air as we laugh.
But laughter is also characterized by repetition. In fact, given the extraordinary variability in the sounds people make when they laugh, repetition is what makes laughter universally recognizable. This is why writers conventionalize laughter as “he-he-he,” “ha-ha-ha,” and “ho-ho-ho” (well, at least if you’re Santa Claus). Notably, this feature isn’t exclusive to English representations. Edmonson observed that laughter is represented in Russian as xe, xe, xe; in Tzotzil—a Mayan language spoken in Mexico—it’s ‘eh ‘eh ‘eh.
We don’t fully understand why humans make this sound when we laugh. When 19th-century biologist Charles Darwin set out to explore the biology of feelings in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, he wrote, “why the sounds which man utters when he is pleased have the peculiar reiterated character of laughter we do not know.” However, the response seems to occur well before culture is embedded in our behaviors: Recognizable laughter is evident in babies from 4 months old.
Nor is laughter unique to humans. Great apes respond to being tickled in much the same way that humans do. Of course, because chimps, bonobos, et cetera have a different vocal apparatus than humans, it sounds more like a dog panting or a person having an asthma attack or energetic sex. However, these primate sounds have the same “peculiar, reiterated character” that Darwin highlighted in humans. This is why laughter is characterized by scientists as a cross-species phenomenon.
Yet, while laughter is evident in the play of other primates, it’s unclear whether they have a sense of humor. Recent research provides evidence of a capacity for teasing through nonverbal behavior. But, as the evolutionary psychologist Robert Provine noted, “there is no evidence that they respond to apparently humorous behavior, their own or that of others, with laughter.”
Giving meaning to laughter seems to be distinctively human.
While some laughter is deliberate, much of it is outside conscious control—an attribute that goes a long way toward explaining the widespread Euro-American ambivalence toward the act. According to the literary scholar Sebastian Coxon, a growing anxiety about mirth is evident in the European historical record from the late Middle Ages. For example, the 16th-century Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus, better known for advising children to “replace farts with coughs,” also warned against “loud laughter and immoderate mirth.”
Notably, Erasmus singled out the “neighing sound that some people make when they laugh” for particular opprobrium—an impulse evident in the contemporary tendency to compare unrestrained laughter with the cries of animals: “howling” with laughter, “hooting” in delight, “snorting” with amusement, and so on. Indeed, while the term “guffaw” might not be borrowed from animal noises, it certainly sounds like it could be.
These characterizations reveal an attempt to draw laughter into the realm of taste and civility—categories that are strongly tied to gender and class strictures. For instance, in an 1860 etiquette guide titled The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette and Manual of Politeness: A Complete Hand Book for the Use of the Lady in Polite Society, readers are counseled to moderate their laughter during a dinner party so that it’s neither too loud nor too soft: “To laugh in a suppressed way, has the appearance of laughing at those around you, and a loud, boisterous laugh is always unlady-like.”
Social judgments abound not just in relation to how we laugh but what we laugh at—as an early 19th-century artwork attests. “Laughter,” etched by British artist and social commentator Thomas Rowlandson, depicts a man laughing at his cat adorned in a bonnet and cloak.
The caption reads: ‘Laughter is one of the most pleasing of the Passions and is with difficulty accounted for, as risibility is frequently excited from the most simple causes—as is the case with the Countryman and his Cat.’ The implication is that “unsophisticated” countrymen lack “class” and are therefore easily amused. (For the record, I am equally unsophisticated, because I will never not find cats pictured with human props funny.)
Still, despite the association between humor and taste, it’s often physical comedy that gets the most laughs. It’s not a coincidence that the first truly global hit comedy was The Gods Must Be Crazy, whose sublime “Tati-like slapstick routines” drew audiences from New York and Caracas to Tokyo and Lagos, despite being widely condemned by film reviewers as apartheid propaganda.
Indeed, screenwriters have long predicted that physical humor will become increasingly prominent in Hollywood comedies because it “transcends dialogue and even most cultural differences,” and movies must increasingly appeal to a global market to produce reliable returns. (As far as I can tell, the future of Hollywood films is basically Marvel movies and slapstick comedies.)…
… As McDonald observes, laughter disrupts the notion of a stable, coherent self—reflected in terms like “cracking up” and “bursting.” Moreover, unrestrained laughter doesn’t just signify a lack of personal control; it can be politically dangerous as well. The literary historian Joseph Butwin writes of “seditious laughter” as a weapon of the oppressed that can serve to destabilize hierarchies and power relations.
In the end, it’s clear that laughter is a deeply curious thing. It’s simultaneously the most social of human expressions and the one most disruptive of social edifices and rules. Shared, sanctioned laughter might bring us together, but unsanctioned laughter shows the cracks, revealing that we’re not quite who we think…
As we muse on mirth (and lest we forget that sometimes laughter is simply a function of simple delight), we might recall that it was on this date in 1929 that Rube Goldberg‘s “The Inventions of Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts, A.K.,” cartoon series first published in Colliers Weekly.
Just imagine being part of a civilization on the cusp of attaining a decent model of the universe’s origins—somewhere between Halley and Lemaître, and you start plotting backwards from where we are and where the Big Bang should be you find Spongebob instead. Running the numbers again and again. Such a universe has no need of Lovecraft, cosmic horror would be right there in the maths.
With this post (and all best wishes for the season), your correspondent begins his annual Holiday hiatus. Regular service should resume on or around the New Year… In the hope that it’s helpful to those still searching for last-minute gifts, this, from the marvelous Tom Gauld…
And as a bonus, this appreciation of Jean Shepherd, the man whose work inspired (and fueled) that yuletide staple, A Christmas Story— and so much more: “The Old Man at Christmas“…
… Most of Shepherd’s career, particularly his first three decades on the radio, relied on riffing and improvisation, which makes for a vast but fairly evanescent archive. People often rewatch classic movies, and sometimes rewatch beloved old TV shows, but they very rarely replay old radio shows. The real marker of twentieth-century success always lay in syndication, and it’s there, a little late in the game, and in a medium that had otherwise eluded him, that Shepherd secured his legacy. In the petty grievances and joys of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, in NPR-style storytelling, in everything that straddles the line between countercultural and popular representative of the monoculture, from Calvin and Hobbes to Steely Dan, echoes of his work can be found, so abundant and diffuse they can be easy to miss—but they’re everywhere you care to look…
Daniel M. Lavery in The New York Review of Books
* Neil Gaiman
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As we read, we might recall that it was on this date in 1882 that an associate of Thomas Edison, Edward Hibberd Johnson (President of the Edison Electric Light Company, a predecessor of Con Edison) lit and displayed the first known electrically illuminated Christmas tree at his home in New York City.
He had Christmas tree bulbs especially made for him–80 red, white, and blue electric light bulbs the size of walnuts, hand-wired around the tree. From that point on, electrically-illuminated Christmas trees, indoors and outdoors, grew in popularity in the United States and elsewhere. In 1895, President Grover Cleveland sponsored the first electrically lit Christmas tree in the White House. And in 1901, the Edison General Electric Company advertised the first commercially-produced Christmas tree lamps (manufactured in strings of nine sockets).
Photo taken on 25 Dec 1882 showing Edward H. Johnson’s Christmas tree with strings of electric lamps. (source)
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